Lacey and Darrell John are among the hundreds of people from the Western Alaska coast, forced to move to Anchorage after a storm spawned by Typhoon Halong nearly wiped out their village.
A year later, they still don’t know if they’ll ever move back to Kipnuk. They want to go home but don’t know if it’s even possible to return or rebuild, or whether doing so would be the right choice. Another fall storm could wash it all away again.
On Oct. 16 last year, they boarded a giant military transport plane for Anchorage. Inside a cargo bay as vast as a whale’s belly, the Johns and other families driven out by the storm sat on the floor. Shoulder to shoulder, they filled the entire plane.
Since then, they’ve done their best to build a new life in Anchorage without letting go of the old one.
One of their first priorities was to enroll their daughter, Emi Grace, in a new school. They chose College Gate Elementary School, which was in the process of absorbing more than 70 new students uprooted by the storm.
The first day brought an immediate scare. The school bus mistakenly dropped off their five-year-old daughter at the wrong shelter. The Johns worried, because she had never ridden a bus before. She also has a heart condition that has left her with a vulnerable immune system.
But once the mix-up was cleared up, the Johns felt College Gate was the right place for Emi. It was one of the best-suited schools in Anchorage to welcome children from Western Alaska. It has a Yup’ik language program, in which children are taught in both Yugtun and English. The Johns were grateful for that, because amid all they had lost, they hoped to keep the one thing the storm couldn’t take from them: their language.
“Quyana caknek,” or thank you, Lacey John said. “Yup’ik is our first language and now her language, and it is very strong in my family,” she said.
Emi is now six and returned to College Gate as a first grader this fall. Her kindergarten teacher, Pauline Bayayok, says Emi arrived already fluent Yup’ik, a rarity among the school’s students from the city. Emi quickly became one of Bayayok’s helpers, because she set an example without even realizing it.
“It helped the other kids try harder to learn Yup’ik, because they’d see us communicating in Yup’ik, and she would understand what we were talking about,” Bayayok said.
The school also helped Emi adjust to her new life in Anchorage. Her parents said she adapted better than they did, partly because she did not fully understand why they had to move. But one day, she discovered the truth.
“I had pictures in my phone that I had taken before we left, but I didn’t show her,” Lacey said. “I didn’t know she was looking through my phone, until she started crying when she saw fallen buildings.”
Home, where there is no home
Emi’s father, Darrell, said they did their best to shield Emi from their worries.
“That part scares me, thinking about the future, not being able to go home, or go to a home, where there is no home,” he said.
So much had changed overnight, but for Emi, one thing remained constant. Although the family left almost everything behind, Emi carried one small reminder of home: a Cabbage Patch doll she calls “Baby.”
Wherever Emi went, Baby went too. Along the way, Lacey took photo after photo of Baby’s journey. What started as pictures of a beloved doll became snapshots of the family’s own journey.
The night the water came
From the very beginning, Emi was determined to take good care of her doll. On the evening of Oct. 11, hours before the village felt the full force of the storm, Emi asked her dad if they could throw a party for Baby.
“She was telling me it's her baby's birthday, and she wanted to make a cake, so we made a cake for her,” Darrell said. “It was a strawberry I think.”
So they turned out the lights, lit the candles and sang Happy Birthday to Baby in Yugtun.
In the early morning hours, the water rose rapidly and they barely had time to grab Emi and make it to the safety of the school. Even inside, the wind only got louder. They watched from a window and saw the lights go out in the village. Somehow, there was still cell phone service. Lacey was terrified by what others shared in texts and on Facebook.
“People were saying that they were floating away and needing help,” Lacey said.
One family, swept away in the powerful current, reported that their house had been carried across the river.
“I was like kind of feeling guilty, not being able to do anything or send for help for the ones who were drifting away.”
By morning, their house ended up several miles from the village, stranded in the middle of the tundra, a jumbled and muddy mess. But there were surprises.
Shiney, the family's puppy, was waiting to be rescued. He was left behind, because the school shelter didn't allow pets. Instead, they put him in his kennel and set it on a table on the back porch. They expected the high water, but not for their house to be swept away. After the storm, the family thought they would never see their dog again. Somehow, Shiney escaped — and inside the battered house on the kitchen counter — sat Baby’s birthday cake, completely intact.
Still, Darrell and Lacey realized they were lucky to ride out the storm in the school. The photos show how Emi watched over Baby during each move that followed.
First came the little bed she made on a gym mat at the Kipnuk school. Then there was the cot at the Egan Center downtown, one of the main shelters for evacuees. There, Baby was tucked in for the night with her sippy cup. After they moved into a hotel, Baby could be found napping on a pillow next to two new doll friends. Finally, when the Johns were able to move into a house in January, Baby got a bunk bed of her own.
“I just want to say, Quyana, and I thank God for continuing to hold us,” Lacey said. “No matter what we go through, he's always there, providing -- all of the donations and the gifts we've been receiving, even up to this day.”
Finding a new rhythm
While the kindness of others has eased their loss, Darrell has missed the daily routines of hunting and gathering.
Whether it was setting blackfish traps or collecting driftwood, each day had a rhythm. The flood took more than buildings and belongings. It also took a way of life.
Emi’s older brother Joe struggled with the change. He has developmental disabilities and missed doing chores around the village. They gave him a sense of purpose and belonging. For Darrell, his very identity as a man was at stake.
“All men in Kipnuk are hunters,” Darrell said. “They hunt to eat, to provide for their family.”
Darrell also needed to find work. For the first time in his life, he had to look for a job among strangers.
“We need to get a resume. I never had a resume in my entire life. Because when we apply for a job, we know everybody,” Darrell said. “We know what people do.”
What was once a closely knit extended family is now scattered across the state. Lacey’s mother is in Bethel. Their oldest son, Russell, went back to Kipnuk to help with the cleanup. And this fall, Lacey left her family in Anchorage and took a job as a school secretary in Bethel, the same position she held in Kipnuk. With retirement approaching, she didn’t want to lose the benefits she had worked for, and they needed the income to afford their new life in Anchorage.
New adventures for Baby
Yet even far from home, Baby’s photos reveal moments of joy and normalcy, from a trip to the Dimond Center ice rink to the Seward Mermaid Festival, where a woman selling homemade hats gifted Baby with one. Other photos show Baby on a fishing trip to the Kenai. She even has her own mini car seat now, and Emi always insists on strapping her in.
“There's a saying that our children are watching us, and they're learning from us,” Lacey said. “And seeing her take care of her doll shows us that we're taking good care of each other.”
Two years earlier, someone in their family had given Baby to Emi for Christmas. Until the storm, the doll never left the house. But as she left their home for the last time that it still stood intact, Lacey tucked Baby into her bag, and Baby’s journey began.
“I'm glad she had something to hold,” Lacey said.
In the photos, Baby and Emi are always the focus. But outside the frame, there’s the family.
“She's our gem. She's our gift. She's our blessing,” Lacey said. “Seeing her happy makes us happy and keeps us going.”
